It hardly seems like a new Apple product has fully arrived until we start hearing the first claims of some kind of reception issue. After the whole “antennagate” debacle with the iPhone 4, Apple users are on the lookout for related issues with the company’s newer products. As should be no surprise, some owners of the new iPad are reporting weak signals when trying to use WiFi networks. Is there actually something wrong with the tablet, or might reports of this issue be overblown?

Ever since the 2012 iPad launched, users have been contributing posts to Apple’s support boards describing weak WiFi signals and problems maintaining a connection. Many specifically note that, compared to previous iPad models, signal strength is noticeably lower on the new edition.

With so many new owners of the iPad out there, there are bound to be a few running into unexpected issues, and with the scale we’re dealing with here, just a small percentage running into problems can give the appearance of widespread WiFi failures.

Some users are convinced this is another antenna problem, noting how reception changes depending on how they hold their tablets. Others believe it to be software-related, and offer several potential ways to temporarily fix things, including disconnecting from the problem network, or clearing WiFi settings and resetting the iPad.

It would be nice to hear some kind of comment from Apple regarding these problems, but we’ve got a feeling that any WiFi issues there may be with the new iPad aren’t big enough problems to impact most users. If there really is some software glitch affecting a small number of iPad owners, perhaps we’ll see it addressed in a future iOS update.